Ranked Guide: How to Win in Ranked PVP

There are certain strategies that you need to consider to be able to win in Ranked PVP in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince (DQM3). Read on to view our ranked guide detailing beginner tips, how to prepare monsters for ranked, how to win online battles, and other tips for ranked PVP.

Ranked Guide: Beginner Tips

Ranked battles are much different from story battles, so you might get overwhelmed at first. You'll need to know certain mechanics before you can start winning in ranked games.

1. Your Story Team Likely Won't Work
2. Prioritize Better Traits, Resistances, and Stat Caps Over Rank
3. Status Effects and Resistance to Them is Important
4. Train and Prepare Your Monsters

Your Story Team Likely Won't Work

Ranked PVP is completely separate from the story, and bringing your story team will likely not get you much wins at all.

Simply having high-ranked monsters and a balanced party is not enough, since your opponents will have thoroughly prepared teams with better synergies and better-trained monsters.

Prioritize Better Traits, Resistances, and Stat Caps Over Rank

Having the highest-ranked monsters won't always work. Sometimes, lower-ranked monsters are a better choice for your team because of their traits, resistances, and stat caps.

Traits to Watch Out For

These are the most impactful traits to have. The Tactical traits especially are extremely useful to have; being able to use powerful skills more than once in one turn is very powerful.
List of All Traits

Status Effects and Resistance to Them is Important

Status effects are a major factor in ranked matches; being able to disable a monster for a turn or more is very important. That's why carrying monsters that can inflict status is important to a good team.

In relation to that, monsters with resistance to status should also be a consideration of teambuilding. Your monster's extremely powerful attacks are pointless if it's unable to use them because they're incapacitated by status.

Monster Resistance Chart & List

L-Size Monsters have Higher Resistance than S-Size Monsters

L-Size monsters have 50 higher resistance to status compared to their S-Size counterparts. If you want a monster with a high status resistance, consider using an L-Size monster.

Train and Prepare Your Monsters

It's a simple tip, but it's necessary to take note of. Many ranked matches are decided by the party composition and how much the monsters are trained.

Level Up by Farming Metal Slimes

You'll need to level up your monsters for training and synthesis, so knowing the best way to farm EXP is mandatory. The best way to do this is by farming Metal Slimes and its relatives.
Metal Slime Farming Guide

Preparation for Ranked Matches

Ranked PVP requires careful preparation before you start training monsters. You'll need to worry about synergies with traits, resistances, and other aspects first.

1. Check the Traits and Resistances to Decide Which Monster to Use
2. Decide on Your Monsters' Talents First
3. Prepare the Monsters' Skills
4. Increase Stats with Seeds
5. Exceed the Stat Caps
6. Obtain the Best Accessories

Check the Traits and Resistances to Decide Which Monster to Use

Your first consideration in selecting your monsters is their traits, resistances, and stat caps. For example, if you want a monster focused on status, Damselfly is a good consideration since it has high speed and the Ultra Crafty Stunner trait, making it likely to stun opponents before they can attack.

As a Beginner, Try Imitating What Others Use in Ranked

If you are new to competitive, it might be difficult to think up of a party from scratch. We recommend trying to imitate other's monsters or party compositions first, just to get experience on how to get a grasp of the basics of battles and the best team compositions to have.
Best Team Composition

Decide on Your Monsters' Talents First

After you decided on which monsters you want to have in your team, you'll now have to decide their talents. Check the Talent List to see what would be best for your monsters.

In general, you'll need to mainly pick a talent or two for the skills in them, then pick resistance or stat increase talent skills for the other talents.

Best Talents for Story and PVP

Prepare the Monsters' Skills

Once you have decided on the talents, you'll now have to think how to get these talents together for your monster, through synthesis. Collect all the monsters with the talents you have, then synthesize them to create the monster you want.

Increase Stats with Seeds

You'll know a stat has reached the stat cap if it is orange in the monster info screen. If your monster hasn't reached the cap yet at level 100, you'll want to increase the stats further.

You can do it through training and synthesis but that means having to raise a monster's level to 100 again. The way to increase stats in max level is using the stat seeds, which permanently raises a monster's stat by a fixed amount.

You can get seeds through various ways, but you can only farm them by releasing monsters. Catch the strongest and highest level monsters as much as possible so you can release them to get good seeds.

How to Increase Monster Stats

Exceed the Stat Caps

If you're really serious about competitive, you'll need to think about exceeding the stat caps Note that the process for this can get extremely tedious.

You can exceed stat caps by incorporating lineage bonuses from ancestors, and rerolling until you get a Shiny Monster. For example, if you exceed your HP limit, you can get around 300 extra HP, which can matter in your battles.

Obtain the Best Accessories

Accessory	Effect	How to Get
Rational Ring	Defence＋10, Clear Thinker Bonus: Defence＋10,Insomniac, Granite Chin	・Synthesized at the Tinkerer's Toolshop
Goddess Ring	Max MP＋30, Wisdom＋30, Auto-Cadabra Bonus: Max MP＋10	・Monster Drop: Angel Slime
Care Ring	Max HP＋30, Defence＋30, Auto-Restora Bonus: Max HP＋10	・Monster Drop: Cureslime
Mighty Amulet	Attack＋100 Bonus: Attack＋10	・Monster Drop: Stout Troll
Meteorite Bracer	Agility＋100 Bonus: Agility＋10	・Monster Drop: Tantamount

Accessories are allowed in ranked matches, so you'll want to equip the best ones to your monsters. In particular, Care Ring, which restores HP every turn, and Meteorite Bracer, which increases agility, are both easy to use and incredibly useful, so be sure to collect and equip them.

Best Accessories

Synthesize and Strengthen Accessories at the Tinkerer's Toolbench

Accessories can be synthesized and strengthened at the Tinkerer's Toolbench. However, note that most accessories only gain +10 bonus stats when enhanced, which are pretty small. The process is a bit tedious, so you'll want to do this only if you're dedicated in min-maxing your monsters.

List of Accessories

How to Win in Ranked PVP

These are certain tips you can try to be able to win ranked battles.

1. Consider Leaving Orders up to the AI
2. Play as Much as You Can to Learn the Meta

Consider Leaving Orders up to the AI

In ranked matches, you are allowed to select the moves that the monsters will use. Most of the time it is better to choose yourself, but there are instances where letting the Auto-Battle AI make the decisions instead is actually better.

The AI will always attempt to use the best move to use in every situation. This sometimes matters when your monster gets hits by a status or a crit. A human has their order locked in before a turn unable to react to that, but an AI will react in the middle of the turn and choose the best move.

Of course, this isn't always the case, and it's still often better to choose a move yourself if you want a monster to use a move for that turn. Just remember that the option to use Auto-Battle is always there.

Set Skills in Advance

If you're going to make use of the AI, make sure to set the allowed skills in advance in the menu. This is to prevent the AI from using moves that you don't want it to use.

Play as Much as You Can to Learn the Meta

Even if you have really strong monsters, you might not be able to win because of your lack of experience with the meta. You'll only get knowledge about meta compositions, what certain monsters do and their roles in the team by simply playing and learning from your enemies' teams.

Surprise Enemies by Deviating from the Meta

Your opponents will likely also know the meta monsters and make their decisions accordingly. You can abuse this by using monsters outside of their common roles.

For example, you can use a common support monster and make it a combat monster instead. The opponent won't be focusing on it, allowing you to surprise them with powerful attacks.

Rules and Specifications for Online Battles

List of Configurable Rules

These are the rules that can be set in online battles. In ranked matches, the rules marked in red above are the ones followed; the rules in black are those that can be set for friendly battles.

If No Wipeout, Winner Determined by Amount of KOs and Damage Taken

If no team has been wiped out after the final round, the winner is determined by the amount of monsters knocked out (regardless of monster size). If it was a tie, the win will then be determined by who dealt more damage.

Ranked Match Rewards

Items and Accessories

In ranked matches, you can get various useful items such as Slimecards (gives XP to a monster) and Beastie Bites (makes monster easier to scout).

You can also get accessories are rewards, so try your best to reach higher ranks.
List of Items

How to Play Ranked PVP

Talk to Fuzzy in Rosehill Tower

You can play online battle such as ranked PVP and friend matches by talking to Fuzz, located just upon entering Rosehill Tower. If you want to play with a friend, you'll need to add them as a friend in Switch first.

You Can Change Party and Accessories Before Battle

While talking to Fuzzy, you can change monsters and accessories before you decide start a battle. You can't change your Orders though, so do that outside of the Online Battles menu.

Needs a Nintendo Switch Online Membership

Ranked PVP is an online service, which is tied to Nintendo Switch Online. You'll need to sign up for a membership to be able to do ranked PVP.

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